Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Open Access Articles

In randomized trials, pair-matching is an intuitive design strategy to protect study validity and to potentially

increase study power. In a common design, candidate units are identified, and their baseline characteristics used

to create the best n/2 matched pairs.Within the resulting pairs, the intervention is randomized, and the outcomes

measured at the end of follow-up.We consider this design to be adaptive, because the construction of thematched

pairs depends on the baseline covariates of all candidate units. As a consequence, the observed data cannot be

considered as n/2 independent, identically distributed pairs of units, as common practice assumes. Instead, the

observed …

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